“A blog about nothing”

2012.06.02.20:31

I was on the bus going to work. I looked out the window and noticed white spots on the thin edge of the plate glass on the bus shelter. Chalky white spots, all about the size of a pea, each was no wider than the 3/8” glass. They stood out on the greenish-gray tint of the glass. The bus sat; I was warm and cozy lulled by the rumbling bass of the engine at idle as it aligned itself with the satellite tracked schedule. My brain turned over the meaning, the origin of the spots. As we pulled away I remembered seeing a similar color of chalky white residue on my black leather boots as they sat and dried on the heater vent after walking thru a spring rainstorm. Salt. The residue on my boots, the chalky white spots on the glass are likely sea salt. Carried aloft over the Coastal Range, dumped on Portland. Evaporated into a powder.

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I wake up a couple of times every night. Sometimes in unframed terror, sometimes in simple annoyance at waking, sometimes manically changing my whole life in my minds eye in a minute. Needless of where my head goes or why I think I wake up, I wake up several times every night. I also have green eyes. I can change neither. Colored contacts sure, heavy drugs sure, but neither changes the fact, just the perceptions of the fact. I’ve learned when I wake to not ask “Why?” When I put my mind to poor use asking “Why?” or detailing the grievances in my world or trying to rewrite my past I suffer and go nuts. The volume in my head creeps up. The committee of voices grows more strident. A therapist once recommended putting my mind to good use. Here’s the trick: think about something and break it down into its sub-parts. For example one of my standbys is to plan extravagant feasts. First I pick a number of guests 50? Okay. Then a structure for a menu: appetizers, soup, salad, entrée, cheese course, desert. Then a menu: Bacon wrapped dates and asparagus, tomato bisque, field greens with wild mushrooms and pickled beets, wild boar in cherry balsamic reduction, farmer’s cheese with black currants, walnuts and truffle shavings, cherry almond torte. Then the recipes, which I’ll leave out here, then the shopping lists. Finally I imagine my way thru the meal, storage and gathering food, prepping items, sometimes days in advance, cooking in an order to present the freshest possible outcomes. Finally serving and enjoying the meal. I have done this innumerable time. Another favorite is methodically deconstructing an object back to its natural resources, like a car. First I make piles of the various components: metals, glasses, rubber, vinyl, plastics, etc. I get granular with this step. Then imagine each component’s manufactory process, smelting, forging, extruding, weaving etc. I like that part; the big industrial trails that materiel follow holds much fascination for me. I readily see trailer trucks, dump trucks, rail cars of ore, silica sand, petroleum rolling backwards from manufactory to processing plant, backward still to mine, oil field, forest. I usually imagine a hawk’s eye view, returning to the auto maker then backward to the resource again and again until all the components are home again. I almost always fall back to sleep, whether I put my mind to good use or not. I fall back to sleep. In the rare (monthly?) event I do not fall back to sleep; I do get up. I have probably seen 4 am more than anybody I know.

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2012.06.03.13:14

I’m different, I get that. Here’s the short, incomplete inventory: I’m bisexual, polyamorous, recovering alcoholic, vow-carrying lay Buddhist, apolitical, history of mental and emotional illness. It embitters me to know that (especially) the initial two on this list are the place-marks for others’ insecurities. It wearies me to work hard at being true to myself, kind to others and still face the sly accusations. Once on a camping trip with other men I was told that the guys felt they couldn’t be themselves because I was there. Once a friend’s wife after seeing me jokingly put my head on her husbands shoulder accused me of seduction. Once a woman I was dating broke up with me before I left her for a man. Once another friend’s wife asked what business I had making friends with straight men. Once a friend’s girlfriend accused me of being the other man for her boyfriend, without ever meeting me she surmised my motives were suspect, you know because I’m different. There’s the rub: my motives are suspect because I’m different. I can’t win. I can’t battle their insecurities; in fact brining them up in the moment of the accusations against me blows up. Besides their insecurities are none of my business, not my problem. The culture, the medium (like agar in a Petrie dish) that is the growing place for their insecurities is the long held belief that sexual minorities are inherently immoral or worse, amoral. Our culture slyly undercuts being a different sexual identity by claiming the identity is immoral (wrong) or that the inflicted person is incapable of being right (amoral.) In my life there has been a long string of seemingly disparate events grown in this medium of suspicion. It’s the reoccurrence that emitters, that wearies. I have no tools it seems against this culture of suspicion. I do my best to make the world a better place. I avoid the easy comfort of the life in the Gay Ghetto mentality. I live as best as possible to my vows and ideals in the real messy day-to-day reality. Maybe by quiet example I create a bit of space free of suspicion. Maybe.